


The Ghosts of Messina

by ClawR



Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Recovery, Interventions, M/M, Self-Hatred, The Therapy Will Continue Until Morale Improves, Though this is undoubtedly the most straight-up hurt/comfort I've ever written, yelling and insulting and generally bad behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 04:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5319992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClawR/pseuds/ClawR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Messina gang comes together to lay to rest some old ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts of Messina

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was cowritten by myself and marydebenham on Tumblr, in a desperate search for catharsis. She wrote the plot. I wrote the part where it's a million words of people hating themselves.
> 
> Pretty much everything potentially triggery is in the tags, but just to reiterate: This fic is about an intervention. Not all of the characters are on their best behavior. People say hurtful things to each other. It all turns out okay.

She wasn’t watching the videos for Pedro.  If she was honest with herself, she had never entirely forgiven Pedro for what he’d done to Hero. She told herself she forgave him. She hugged him when she saw him. She spoke all the required words of forgiveness, but she spoke them for Ben. For Hero. For Meg. For everyone who wanted her to forgive and forget and let high school shit be high school shit. But Beatrice Duke wasn’t a forgiver. It wasn’t in her nature. She could forgive slights against herself with enough motivation, when she understood their purpose. It took time, but she could get there. But hurting Hero? Her innocent, adored Hero? That she could never truly forgive, no matter the show she put up for others. In her deepest heart of hearts, she knew what she couldn’t say aloud: that Pedro and Claudio had not suffered enough for what they had done. Claudio for having the audacity to call Hero a slut in front of all their friends, for putting his wretched hands on her. Pedro for encouraging people to tape the horrible thing and broadcast it to the whole internet. They both got off easy, in her opinion. Pedro had dented his All Around Great Guy image, gone off to uni and gotten a little wild. Claudio had apparently stopped bathing and grown out a sad little scraggly goatee as self-abasement. Big whoop. It wasn’t enough. But Bea pretended, for the sake of those who needed to move on.

So, no. She didn’t pull up the Lovely Little Losers channel to check on Pedro. Nor did she do it for Freddie. She liked Freddie, but they weren’t close. She figured Freddie could figure out her shit or not, and really it only affected Bea insofar as it affected Ben’s behavior. Balthazar was with Bea at Vegan Fred’s, safely out of the Lair of Loserdom.  So yeah, she pulled up the video to see Dickface. Bea wasn’t the _most_ self-aware person, but she understood herself well enough to know she was mostly watching to see if Ben was suffering as much as she was. He clearly was, which put a small smile on her face. Although—his rant about Marlowe made her smile even wider.  She was furious with him, she didn’t understand what he was doing, but it was a relief to see he was Benedick.  Insane, over the top, non-stop chattering Benedick, with _views_ — _strong_ views—about everything. She still hated him, though.

She would’ve stopped watching when the rant was over, because honestly, she didn’t have the patience to sit through 12-plus minutes of whatever the hell the three stupidest people in New Zealand thought was camera-worthy.

But then there was a _swordfight_. Even in her bitter, unforgiving, totally-fed-up-with-Rules-McDickface heart, Beatrice had to admit that a swordfight was prime vlogging material. They even had two angles! Those arseholes.

And then she saw it.

“I forgive you,” said Obviously Insane Man Costa to Pedro—sorry, _Peter_. And he pulled Peter into a hug. And the look on Peter’s face…

The night of Hero’s 16th birthday party—the Arsehole Convention, as Bea privately called it—Bea had led Hero sobbing away from the kitchen. She’d barricaded them in Hero’s bedroom, and Hero had wept into her shoulder, while Bea had simmered, stewed, boiled. When Hero had finally calmed down enough to speak, the first words out of her mouth had been, “I didn’t do it.”

Bea, who by that point thought her head might pop from the pressure of her anger, had said, “Of course you didn’t fucking do it!”

And the look on Hero’s face had been so wary, and grateful, and hurt. It was the look of someone who had run headlong into the one thing she most desperately needed, and bruised herself on it. It was as clear in Bea’s mind as if she’d videotaped it.

How surreal it was, to see the same look on the face of one of the people who’d hurt Hero.

Bea watched the rest of the video in a sick daze. It was a moment she knew she’d remember for the rest of her life—a moment she would _make_ herself remember, so that she could use it over and over again as a talisman to remind herself to be less self-righteous, to be more forgiving, to assume less. She watched Peter shrink to nothing while Costa told him that he was forgiven, that as much as you might hate yourself you could never stop affecting the people around you, that life was pointless and so you had to do right by others because all there was in the world was your effect on them. She saw Pedro—really saw him—for perhaps the first time in all the years she had known him. And what she saw was not Three-Quarters-of-the-Way-Around Great Guy Pedro Donaldson. What she saw was someone suffering every bit as much as she’d secretly hoped Peter would. And with Hero’s expression fresh in her mind, she found she didn’t want it. She couldn’t believe she’d ever wanted it.

She rewatched all the videos from the flat that night. All of them. And now that she was _really_ seeing Pedro, the last six months looked very different.

Bea didn’t ever really cry—she’d always figured she wasn’t built for it. But that night, rage pushed a few tears out. Not rage at Pedro—Bea had already been through that, ranting all over Vegan Fred’s house about how he had ruined everyone and everything he touched, while Meg shot nervous glances at her, and Balthazar quietly retreated to a corner with headphones. Somewhere inside, Bea had _blamed_ Pedro for Ben’s choices; those stupid rules had begun with Ben trying to save Pedro from himself. And she certainly blamed Pedro for the walking emotional disaster that was Balthazar Jones these days.

But that anger was on the backburner right now, overshadowed by her rage at Ben, at Freddie, and most of all, at herself. They were Pedro’s friends—his best friends. And they had failed him, dismissed him, written him off, while he fell apart in front of them. She couldn’t blame Balth—he had been too close to the situation, too in love. How could he understand the full scope of Human Disaster Peter Donaldson when he was being buried under the fallout? But the rest of them… The rest of them needed to atone for their failure.

Bea thought she finally understood, but she needed someone to talk it through with. There was only one person to call at a time like this. She picked up her cell phone, wiped away a final tear of frustration, and hit the first contact number in her phone.

“Hero?” she asked. “Yes, I know it’s 4 a.m. Yes, I know you have school in the morning. I’m sorry, dear cousin. But everything is a bit of a complete nuclear disaster, and I need you.”

 

#

 

For obvious reasons, Hero initially thought Bea was calling about Ben. When she discovered that the actual topic was Pedro, she was somewhat surprised, but listened attentively. When instructed to do so by Bea, she went back and watched certain videos. She had watched most of them before, in a desultory kind of way. She loved everyone in them, but it all felt so removed from daily life of school, friends, baking, spending time with her mums, and making future plans. This time, she watched more closely. And as the sun began to rise Monday morning, she quietly, slowly talked through The Pedro Problem with Bea. She found herself agreeing with her cousin’s initial assessment, and when they were past that, she methodically laid out everything that Bea had missed. Balth may have been the quiet observer of their group, and Ben and Meg the loud observers, but Hero had empathy. Some people might think that it made her weak, a pushover, but it didn’t. It let her _know_ people. It pulled her in close enough to hear their hearts. And if that was close enough to be hurt, well, so be it.

“So, what do I do?” Beatrice asked her desperately. Because something had to be done. That much was now obvious.

“It’s time to put aside whatever else is happening in that flat, and between you and Ben, and Kitso and Freddie, and all the other problems, and focus on helping Pedro,” said Hero. “You have to call Ben and the two of you need to really communicate about what is happening in your relationship. Clear out the mess, so you can work together on this. It can’t be delayed any longer. And then you need to put it aside to help Pedro.”

“But _how?_ ” Bea asked.

“It’s time to finally put last year behind us,” said Hero. “Once and for all. I’m coming to Wellington.”

 

#

 

Bea protested. Hero had school. The aunties would be upset and never give permission. Her life would be disrupted. It was all to no avail. Hero would skip school Thursday and drive to Wellington with Ursula, who was back from tramping with her family. She’d be back by next Monday and do her assignments in the car. The aunties were on board—it was hard to argue with Hero’s excellent grades, and she asked for so little that when she did want something, she usually got it. It helped that they weren’t aware that John would be joining Ursula and Hero. In the meantime, it was only Monday, and Bea had assignments. She was to sit down and talk to— _not at_ , Hero said gently—Ben, Balth, and Meg. She needed to give them insight into what the cousins had realized. And she and Ben needed to get their shit out of the way so they could present a united front.

The talk with Ben was the hardest, obviously. Bea _hated_ having to swallow her pride and invite him to Boyet’s to talk. But she did it—and not just because she wanted to help Pedro. Talking to Hero had, as it so often did, smoothed out the rough edges of Bea’s mind. She was remembering that she loved Ben, and that their relationship deserved a chance to survive. And if Ben couldn’t give it that chance, well, Bea would.

Ben clattered into Vegan Fred’s in a storm of sputtered apologies and self-righteous justifications. He soliloquied for 30 seconds on why his stance was just, then abruptly began swearing that Bea was more important to him than the Rules, than _Doctor Who_ , than even _tea_ , then immediately undercut that by spewing word vomit about his Youtube subscribers. It took a lot of deep breaths and interruptions, but she finally got him calmed down enough for a rational conversation. It helped that she had hit Vegan Fred’s punching bag in his home gym approximately six dozen times that morning in preparation for their conversation.

The resulting heart-to-heart lasted hours. It took them to the coffeeshop, to a bench by the waterfront, through the rain-soaked streets of Wellington, and finally into a single easy chair in the uni lounge, where they cuddled together for much, much longer than a minute. The emotional territory it covered was scarier: Bea’s travels, Ben’s loneliness and fear of abandonment, how vlogging had become his source of validation, and their failure to do the very thing they had been so smug about less than a year ago—communicate. They talked more openly then they had since they’d first admitted their feelings, and finally, they came to an understanding. It wasn’t perfect, but they thought it could _work_.  Ben would back down from the Rules and agree they weren’t working. He’d swallow his pride and allow Freddie to save face. Ben would keep vlogging, but only when people specifically agreed to be in his videos and not at all times. Bea would go on her travels, and would Skype him every day she could and send lots of communication. Ben would get a job next year and use the money to travel to see her during uni break. He would find something outside of the flat to do, too—tutoring or theatre or working on local low-budget movies. And Bea announced that when she returned, she intended to come to Wellington to live and quite possibly study. They could find a way to make this work for them.

Only in the fourth hour, after the deal was hashed out and signed in metaphorical blood, and after Bea and Ben had done a bit more creative breaking of Rule 5, did Bea tell Ben what she suspected about Pedro. After all the fuss and drama, that turned out to be the hardest part. As soon as he understood what Bea had seen, Ben started blaming himself for trying to put patches a patient who was bleeding out. And Bea was feeling pretty guilty herself. She emphasized that The Plan would allow them to atone.

“Anyway,” Bea said, “Hero told me something last night, and I think we should try to remember it.”

“What’s that?” Ben said. “Friends don’t let friends go off the deep end?”

Bea nuzzled her head into his neck. “She said you can’t live someone’s life for them. You can be there for them, and help them, but they’re the one who has to do something with that. And if they don’t, it’s not on you.”

“Peter will,” Ben said. “I know it.” And although they’d _just_ promised not to lie to each other about their feelings, Bea let him have that one.

 At 2 a.m. she gently turned Ben home toward the flat, with instructions to sit down with Freddie and talk—no, not just talk. _Communicate_. About the Rules. About The Plan. About what needed to happen before Friday.

 

#

 

Meg turned out to be the easiest conversation. For all Meg’s flippancy, she did care about Pedro. Besides, Meg was always looking for a touch of drama in her life. She’d originally hoped to get it from scheming with Ben to hook up Pedro and Balthazar, and while she would have _preferred_ that outcome, she could work with this. She was pretty sure she could get a great novel from all of this someday. With name changes, _obviously_ , she told Bea when Bea raised her eyebrows. And she really did want her friends happier and healthier before she returned to Auckland. If that came with just a touch of dramatic flair, well, that wouldn’t hurt anyone.

 

#

 

Balthazar was difficult. More difficult than Ben, in some ways. With Ben, everything had been personally fraught because they had their own relationship issues to pick through first, but they could at least look at Pedro’s situation semi-objectively. But with Balth, there were a million landmines that could go off. Hero had mapped them out for Bea. His love for Pedro. His devastation at Pedro’s current state. His need to take responsibility for everything and everyone he loved. His feeling of personal failure at not being _enough_ to fix Pedro. The sting of romantic rejection. The feelings of betrayal. The hurt of living with a man he had loved for six years and watching a string of women and men come out of his bedroom, while his own feelings were ignored in favor of drinking and self-destruction. His confusion at the tangle of mixed messages Pedro sent him at every turn. Never knowing if one day he’d have his best friend, only to turn around the next and find a wooing suitor, and the day after that to find an indifferent flat-mate. Worst of all, he had finally removed himself from the toxic stew that was that flat, and now Bea was asking him to return. Not just physically, but emotionally. Every word out of Bea’s mouth had the potential to bring Balth to his metaphorical knees. It was too much.

But she’d promised Hero.

She found Balth strumming his guitar on a bed in the guest room he and Kitso had claimed at Vegan Fred’s. Next to him was a small notebook and pen. She had come armed with tea, a few artisanal vegan cheeses (who even knew such a thing existed?), oatcakes, and a few bottles of beer. She listened quietly while Balth strummed a few lines of a new song. He gave her a little half-smile that seemed a bit more like a grimace.

“What did I do to earn oatcakes and cheese?” asked Balth.

“ _Vegan_ cheese,” said Bea.

“Oatcakes and vegan cheese, then.” He raised his eyebrow at her. He looked at her with wide, vulnerable eyes, like a puppy.  But there was steel behind them, Bea realized. Balth was overly empathetic sometimes, sure. He took on problems that weren’t his own. But he’d also broken off a kiss with the man he loved when it wasn’t being given on acceptable terms. He could handle this. He _could_. It wouldn’t break him. In fact, it might make him stronger. He was too close to see what was really happening, but perhaps an explanation from someone with more objectivity could open his eyes. Show Balth it was never about him, not really. He was just collateral damage. Bea opened her mouth to say something clichéd, something like, _We need to talk_.

And then she chickened out.

Bea didn’t like emotional conversations. She found them unsettling, and she’d already had so many of them over the past few days. And those were with people knew almost as well as she knew herself. She loved Balthazar. He’d been in her life since Year 9. He was kind and giving and talented and sweet. They were friends. But they weren’t particularly close. Perhaps she wished they were, perhaps they could be in the future. But now, looking at his eyes, Bea realized that she had no idea what he’d say to her if she talked to him, and no idea how to respond when he did. It really was too much.

“Oh, you know, you deserve a treat now and then,” she babbled, backing out the door. “Got to make up for all those months under the Rules!”

She would let Hero handle this.

 

#

 

Hero was unamused when she showed up Thursday night and discovered that Bea had failed to have The Conversation with Balthazar. Hero had, she said, already done quite enough. She’d spoken with the mums, convinced John to get permission to drive up with her and Ursula, spent eight hours in the car doing maths and history so that she’d be all caught up for Monday, and written out notes for each person who would be involved tomorrow. She’d spent the week reading multiple websites, meeting with the school counselor—who was now convinced Hero was deeply depressed and kept trying to press numbers for resources upon her—and checking books out of the library. She’d rewatched all of her and Bea’s videos, all of the The Watch, all of Ben’s videos, Meg’s videos. Really, it was shocking how much of their lives were on the internet. She had _prepared_. Oh, and she’d made vegan _and_ non-vegan cookies to bring to share with her hosts. She was tired and she wanted to crawl into bed for what was sure to be an emotionally difficult and exhausting next day.

Bea had responded to this litany of vexations with wounded puppy dog eyes.

“That won’t work with me anymore, you know. You told me not to take any shit from anyone. That includes you, Beatrice.” Beatrice hung herself upon Hero’s shoulders and took her hand.

“But my Hero. My lovely Hero. I _tried_. I really did. But I’m no good at this kind of thing. You _know_ that. Being in that room with Balthazar, I could literally feel his emotions crawling up onto my skin and burrowing into me.” She shivered and shook out her arms, as if the feelings were ants she was flinging as far from her as possible. “It made me feel quite infected.”

Hero laughed a bit at Bea’s flair for the dramatic, though Bea could see she was still irritated.

“Fine,” she said, shrugging out from under Beatrice. “I will do this for you. But you have no idea how much you owe me. We’re talking chores for weeks. In the meantime, you can at least feed poor Ursula and John and call everyone to ensure we’re all set up for tomorrow.”

“Deal!” Beatrice swung Hero around happily. A smile slipped across Hero’s face—involuntary, surely.

“I may need John at some point, so please make sure he stays in the flat,” said Hero.

“John?” Beatrice made a face. “What in the world could you need John for?” For all the strides she’d made of late with forgiveness, Bea still very much Disapproved of John.

Hero rolled her eyes. “He’s Pedro’s brother, you nit. That’s like asking why I might be useful if someone was talking to Ben about you.”

Bea shrugged. “I never think of them as siblings. Still.”

“Well, that’s your mistake then,” said Hero. “You and your boyfriend seem to share a lot of them.” Then Hero slipped into her comfortable bunny slippers and went off to knock on Balthazar’s door. Bea watched her gain admittance—good Lord, she didn’t even have oatcakes or buns or chocolate, she’d gone in _unarmed_ —and the door close after her.

It was very quiet while Bea fixed plates of strange vegan pie for Ursula and John to eat. Both were quiet people by nature, and John had a book propped up in front of him, while Ursula played on her iPad. Meg was somewhat half-heartedly flirting with Vegan Fred, who was home from his meetings for the day. Bea thought Meg was a little more nervous about tomorrow than she let on. Beatrice certainly had butterflies. She sent out a string of text messages to the group—Ben, Freddie, Hero, John, Ursula, and Meg—even though most of them were right in front of her. She wanted everyone to be on the same page and have their parts down in writing. John quirked an eyebrow at her as his phone lit up, but she told him to piss off and he smiled and easily returned to his book.

Three hours in, the vegan pie long eaten, John’s book finished and another started, Bea was twirling around in a desk chair, contemplating calling Ben, just for some support, when she received a text from Hero.

**_Would like some food now. For me and Balth. Some tea too. Maybe a beer. Send in John with it. NO ONE ELSE. <3_ **

Bea quickly stood up and reheated a few plates of the vegan pie. She brewed three cups of tea, pulled a microbrew and a few bottles of water out of the refrigerator, and threw everything on a tray. She pulled John away from his book and told him it was his time. John looked at her, quietly and seriously. That look on John had always unnerved Beatrice.

“You don’t need to stare so intensely at _everything_ ,” she said. “Be nice in there.”

John cut her off. “He’s my brother, Beatrice. We’ve—well, you know we’ve had our difficulties. But you’ve seen me since last year. Do you honestly believe this isn’t as important—more important—to me than most of you?”

“Yes, well, you’ve never been that close.”

“And that was both of our faults. We’ve made progress. I don’t want to gain a brother, just to lose him to this.”

“But Balthazar isn’t your brother, and if you hurt him, or dismiss him, or are snide to him…” she continued.

“Beatrice.” John spoke firmly. Well. As firmly as John ever spoke. “Balthazar is the man my brother is in love with, regardless of whether Peter knows that or not. I actually think he probably does, somewhere deep down inside. I would not hurt him for the world. Not on purpose. Would be a quite shit way to try to help my brother.”

 Feeling properly chastised, Beatrice handed over the tray to John, who simply raised an eyebrow and turned around to head down to the guest room Balth had claimed.

It was 11 p.m. Beatrice was tired. She was just—so tired. Ursula was now on the couch, flipping through a notebook and making scribbles here and there. Meg had her head in her lap. Vegan Fred had retired to bed after giving Meg a bit of a lingering hug. Kitso had returned from work and was heating up his own food, nodding his head to the music Bea could hear faintly from his headphones when he walked by. Bea was under the impression that he had been meeting Freddie the past few nights, late at night—way after the flat’s self-imposed idiotic curfew—but Bea didn’t know exactly what progress had been made between them. Bea suspected part of it was that Kitso, who was sharing a room with Balthazar, was trying to give him a lot of space. Bea wished Kitso and Freddie the best. It was always difficult making a relationship work with a pigheaded, stubborn, prideful dork, as she knew better than most. But at least Kit and Freddie had the advantage that only one of them fit that description. She thought they’d be quite nice together. Kit could provide a nice counter-balance to Freddie, and Freddie could do the same for him. Bea and Ben, by contrast, sometimes fed off the worst of each other. On the other hand, they also fed off the best of each other. Bea shook her head to derail that train of thought. Freddie and Kit would do what worked for Freddie and Kit, and she and Ben would do what worked for them. She couldn’t take on worries about Freddie and Kit when she had so much else to be focused on. Somehow, though, she felt they might make it. She found herself beginning to feel unreasonably hopeful. How annoying.

Kit wouldn’t be there tomorrow. It was only the old Messina gang, except for Freddie. Bea had hemmed and hawed with Hero a bit about whether to include Freddie, in the end, Ben had persuaded them to include her. Much of what was happening with Pedro was caught up in the past, but Freddie had lived the consequences of that past with him for the past year or so, and Ben felt she could provide valuable insight. Besides, it was her home too and Freddie would be incensed at being excluded, and there was no way to keep her out of the flat. Moreover, in Bea’s brief talks with her over the past few days of planning, she came to understand that Freddie really did care about Pedro.  She wanted him happier and healthier, not just for the good of the flat—though, of course, she cared a great deal about the good of the flat—but for him. And, frankly, she had told Beatrice, at some point she was really hoping to meet the real Peter, or the real Pedro, or whoever he was—not this half-here, half-there disaster.

12 a.m. now. Hero had been with Balthazar for three hours alone, and a fourth with John. Meg was asleep now, and Ursula was gently urging her up. Meg stumbled down the hallway to the bedroom she and Bea shared, mumbling something unintelligible. Ursula stood up and gently pressed her hand to Bea’s shoulder.

“Could you thank Hero for me?” she whispered. “I wanted to be there for him, but I just…”

“Couldn’t do four hours of emotion?”

Ursula smiled. She handed Bea the piece of notebook paper she’d been scribbling on earlier.

“This is for Balth, but you could read it too,” she said. “Everything in its own time, Beatrice. Get some sleep.”

Ursula shuffled off to the room she was sharing with Hero, and Bea unfolded the sheet of paper. Ursula had handed her the notes that Hero had written for Balth to use tomorrow. Hero had written personalized notes for everyone: what their main points should be, tips to deal with certain reactions, a list of what order they would all speak in. This, Hero had reminded them all multiple times, was only to keep things generally organized; everyone should feel free to allow things to unfold naturally.

But there was a scribble in the margins of Balth’s notes that Bea rather suspected had been added by Ursula.

_There is a tide in the affairs of men._

_Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;_

_Omitted, all the voyage of their life_

_Is bound in shallows and in miseries._

_On such a full sea are we now afloat,_

_And we must take the current when it serves,_

_Or lose our ventures._

Bea smiled. Nerds, the lot of them.

 

#

 

Beatrice was dozing on the couch when Balth’s door finally opened. John slipped out and Bea glanced at her watch. 2 a.m. Hero had been in there for six hours. She was probably exhausted. Actually, no probably about it. John saw Bea looking at him dazedly and smiled just a little before indicating with his head that Bea should go into the room.

Bea crept forward. John gripped her arm, she thought encouragingly, as she passed by. He let her go and turned, presumably to go catch a few hours of sleep on the couch, and Bea stuck her head tentatively in the room.

Hero was on the bed, with her arms around Balthazar. His head was tucked into her shoulder. There were at least three boxes of used Kleenex littered around the bed. His eyes were red and puffy and he’d obviously been crying. Bea closed the door, picked up an unopened bottle of water from the desk, and handed it to Hero. Hero cracked the top and pulled Balth up gently and handed it to him. He took several sips and straightened out his shirt, pulling the sleeves as far down as they would go.

“Hey, Bea,” he croaked. “I’m a bit of a mess, yeah?” Bea felt her stupid eyes filling with stupid tears and at once it hit her that it was all so _stupid_. All this stupid, stupid hurt over a stupid high school mess, because of _stupid_ feelings, and _stupid_ hurts and jealousies, and _stupid_ pride and _stupid_ insecurity, and now this poor gentle, kind, giving man was hurt over all that stupidity. She crawled onto the bed and hugged him as tightly as she could. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek and ran her hands over his back.

“Not a mess,” she whispered. She glanced at him and then they both laughed a little as she realized their _stupid_ tears had mingled on her Flight of the Conchords t-shirt, leaving a wet spot. “Okay, a bit of a mess.” She amended. “I think we all are.”

“I just don’t see how I could miss it. I should have seen it. I was there for all of it. You guys were only there for the first part, Freddie was only there for the second part, but I saw every second of it. We’ve been friends for six years. How could I miss what was happening with him?”

“Balth,” said Hero gently. “We’ve been over this.”

“Balth, Ben was there too. He was in Messina, and then he was in the flat. He knew everything you did. You weren’t the only one who didn’t see it. And I saw the videos and I’ve been here for weeks. I didn’t see it either, and Pedro—”

“Peter,” Balthazar corrected.

“Oh, I’ll call him whatever I want, up to and including Fuckface. He and I have been friends since childhood. He can call himself Peter, or Pedro, or Faustus, or Oscar the Grouch, and I will call him whatever I want. Doesn’t change who he is.”

Balth smiled a little, and Bea counted it a win.

“What I’m saying is that _Peter_ and I were friends since childhood, but it was still easy to miss. He covered it so well with his, ‘I’m just being a normal college bloke. I’m just exploring my sexuality. I’m just figuring out who I am and fucking up and making mistakes while I’m young.’ And that is normal behavior at our age. There’s nothing wrong with flings, if everyone knows the score. There’s nothing wrong with sex, or drinking, or having a few too many nights out. The problem is when that is covering up for something else—it’s an excuse to forget, or punish, or hurt. And it was easy for me to look at his behavior and say, ‘Well, there’s Shithead Pedro doing what Shithead Pedro _would_ do,’ since I was still angry at him. And it was easy for Freddie to see it as typical, irritating college-lad behavior. And it was easy for Ben and Meg to think the answer was this grand love story, because it fit into their sense of the dramatic and it gave them something to scheme and plan about. But Balth, that’s what Peter _wanted_ , you see?”

Bea was sure that Hero had been over this already, as Hero was the one who’d laid it out to her. But Balth was shaking his head. “I’m closer to him than any of you, I _knew_ it wasn’t anything like that.”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re too close. You’re in love with him.”

Balth gave her the wide-eyed stare for a moment, then ducked his head, as if to say, _No point denying it_.

“You think it’s all on you, Balth, but it’s not. You think you should be enough to fix him, but you can’t. It was hurting you. Surely you see that.”

“He didn’t mean…”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Bea blew out a frustrated breath and looked to Hero for an assist. Hero just smiled and gave her a _go on_ gesture. “I’m not blaming him, okay, I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying everything was blowing up, and you thought that you should be enough to stop it, but that’s not how it works. Bombs go off. It’s what they do. But how could you see the problem with Peter when you were looking for the problem with yourself?”

Bea was on a roll now. She was used to this; once she got started talking about something, it could be ages before she stopped. “We’re all fucked in the head, Balth, in our own ways. Surely that’s obvious by now. And we’re all too close to this. That’s why it took a madman with a sword to figure it out. But we’re here now. It doesn’t matter who failed in what ways. It matters that we can fix this, and we can do it before it’s too late.”

Balthazar and Hero fairly gaped at Beatrice. “What?” she said defensively. They looked at each other and giggled a bit. “What!?”

“Nothing, nothing,” muttered Balthazar. “That was just quite a speech. Perceptive.”

“Well, I never claimed to be a quiet one,” Beatrice glared at them, but she was secretly a bit pleased at being called “perceptive.” It didn’t happen often. Balthazar raised his hands defensively and Hero’s eyes shone.

“No, my dearest cousin,” said Hero. A smile kept overtaking her lips. “No, I suppose you didn’t.”

Balth laughed, drying his eyes on yet another tissue. “I guess now I know what all the oatcakes and vegan artisanal cheeses were about the other night.”

“Oh, Balth, I’m really sorry about that,” said Bea. “I just… couldn’t. Hero’s always been the actual strong one, you know?”

“It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for,” said Hero, smiling and running her hands through Balthazar’s hair. Bea looked at Balthazar. He looked devastated. Wrung out. Emotionally spent. Sad. But underneath all that, she saw that same sliver of steel she occasionally saw in Hero these days, that she had seen in Balthazar the other night when she had attempted to have this conversation with him. The quiet ones. Yes. The ones who didn’t have to talk constantly about how clever they were, or show the world their strength through physicality, or sharp wit, or biting insults, but who quietly, competently, graciously, selflessly gave of themselves to the world around them, expecting little in return. The ones who could survive the worst of insults, of slanders, of devastations, without losing their faith in the world and in people. Perhaps that’s where their strength came from—how should she know? She didn’t have that kind of strength. Oh, she was strong. She was fierce. She was a defender of those she loved. That’s why she was here tonight, and would be there tomorrow, and would stay until she was absolutely that they weren’t going to lose Pedro over all this stupidity. But she was glad there would be more than one kind of strength there tomorrow. They would need every kind there was.

 

#

 

Six p.m., and Peter somehow found himself on the living room couch with Freddie and Ben, awaiting a Challenge. He’d grumbled about it a bit—what was the point, now Balth was gone? But Freddie and Ben had been insistent that things would continue as they always had. And Peter had no excuse to get out of it. There were no rehearsals on Friday or Saturday, because the theater was used for kiddie acting classes on those days. He’d quit his job at the bar a few weeks ago; it wasn’t fun anymore, and there was nothing he wanted to spend the money on. So Sir Peter the Great would be required to attend the Challenge, or face Punishment.

Freddie and Ben had mentioned that some others were coming over for the Challenge. He was sort of vaguely aware that Ben and Bea had made up at some point, and he figured it was possible Kitso and Freddie had as well. To the extent he had any expectations about tonight at all, Peter figured that probably the guests would include Bea, Meg, maybe Kitso, perhaps Paige and Chelsey. Obviously not Balthazar. Balthy couldn’t even stand to be the same room as him anymore. Peter couldn’t blame him, but living at the flat at this point seemed to be like living with Balthazar’s ghost. There was where they had burned toast the morning the toaster went on the fritz, laughing hysterically as Freddie tried to work the fire extinguisher, until Balthazar had calmly thrown a wet towel over the small fire. There was where Balthazar sat strumming on his instruments while Peter studied for a test. There was the table where Balth always set some aspirin and water for him in the mornings when he drank too much the night before. Peter could barely stand to even see the bathtub in the periphery of his vision.

Peter looked around vaguely and noted the camera was missing.

“Camera?” he muttered.

“No,” said Ben shortly. His leg was jiggling uncontrollably. Freddie’s face had all but disappeared into her turtleneck.

“Whatever,” said Peter. He knew there was something odd about this whole setup tonight, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care. Lately, he seemed to be walking through life underwater, with everything else in the world—sights, sounds, his own feelings—sitting on distant dry land. He was used to being angry. He was used to being sad. Scared, anxious, sure. He was even used to just mentally checking out. Often, when Freddie or Ben or even Balth was talking to him, he only heard every other word. Or he heard them or didn’t really process. That was all familiar.

But this feeling of walking through water, of having to work twice as hard for every step, of being too far from the rest of the world to touch it—that was kind of new. It was as if everyone was speaking to him through headphones, like during that game Bea suggested. The world hardly felt real. Or perhaps it was he, Peter, who wasn’t real.

He couldn’t even cry anymore. He thought maybe it should scare him, but he didn’t have the capacity for that, either. He just— _was_. And that worked okay for him. A few hours of nonsense and then he could go back to his bed and just be until Sunday, when he had to get up again for the stupid play.  He could drink the vodka hidden under his bed, and listen to music, and just stare. Maybe read some of his tragedies for class. Could never get enough of tragedy, obviously. Had to surround him everywhere.

At exactly 6:35, there was a short knock at the door. Peter prepared himself to pretend to be Normal Peter. Or at least to not draw attention to himself. Yeah, that was better. Less effort.

Ben jumped up and ran over to the door and fell over in his haste. Freddie started hopping on one foot and pulling at her ponytail. It was all very odd, Peter thought. Probably. Hard to say these days, when mad swordsmen barging in to their flat and challenging him to duels was _de rigueur_.

The first person through the door was Bea, who gave Ben a hand up and then a firm hug. She whispered something quietly in his ear. Peter wondered what it was, then stopped caring. Ben nodded and squared his jaw. Bea then went over to Freddie and calmly grasped her arms. Freddie stopped hopping. It was almost funny to Peter now that he had once been in love with Bea. Well, maybe love wasn’t the right word. He’d been enamored of her. Funny, biting, an over-developed sense of justice. Beautiful. She reminded him of a Fury. It wouldn’t have been a great relationship between them. But before the water had overtaken him, he had missed her easy camaraderie, almost as much as he had missed her good opinion.

Next through the door was Meg. _Shocker_ , thought Peter. As goes Beatrice, there goes Meg. He vaguely wondered if that worked the other way too. Sometimes he thought Meg got the short end of the friendship stick. Not that it was his problem. He and Meg were only friends really through others. He liked her well enough. Thought about hooking up with her once or twice in Year 10 before he decided that wouldn’t be great for the group dynamic. She was funny. Loud. Sometimes quite droll. Sensitive in her own way. She was a lot of fun, back when he used to care about that. Meg would have been down to come to town with him every weekend if she was at uni with them.

The next people through the door briefly shocked Peter out of himself. He stood up when he saw John. John? What the fuck was John doing here? They had just put him back on a plane to Auckland a few weeks ago. Somehow the next person was even more shocking. Ursula? _Ursula?_ He hadn’t seen Ursula since graduation. She had taken off traveling afterwards and wasn’t back by the time Peter left for school. He supposed that he had some sort of sense they might never cross paths again. It was like that sometimes, he knew, with people from high school. You revolved around each other because of your connections, you stayed friends on Facebook or something, but you never really met again, unless you ran into each other at a random grocery expedition in your hometown, or one of your mutual friends got married. What the fuck was Ursula doing in his flat? His flat in Wellington. It was like seeing a lion in your front yard.

Peter was awake now, and clear and thinking for the first time in days, and he was about to ask what the fuck was going on, when the last person walked through the door.

“Hero,” he croaked.

“Hello, Peter,” she said. She was smiling at him, like he was a friend. She walked up to him and put her arms around him. “It’s truly good to see you. Thank you for the lovely birthday present. So thoughtful.”

Hero was here. In his flat. Hugging him, and thanking him for the birthday present that Balthazar had picked out months ago, that Peter had signed his name on and paid for half of. He remembered he had wanted it to be nice. That had been important. When he and Balth had been budgeting for the gift, Peter had put all his entertainment money into it for the month. Balth had cheerfully matched Peter’s own contribution, nodding softly and perhaps a little knowingly when Peter had stumblingly explained he wanted it to be good—y’know, like nice—like something that was a treat. Something just… good. With a pretty card. By the time Balthazar brought home the gift voucher and the delicately pretty card, Peter’s mood had shifted into a bitter, directionless anger. He’d just grunted and signed his name in his usual chicken scratch. God, he was an arsehole. He was pretty sure he had never even thanked Balthazar for doing it.

And now here was Hero, sweet, honest Hero, thanking him for it.

The waves washed over him, and he was undersea once more.

Freddie was shutting the door and locking it. Then she was locking the upper lock, the one that required a key to open from the inside or the outside. She handed the key to Hero when she was done.

Hero looked at Ben, who was hugging Ursula.

“Kitchen?” asked Hero.

Ben pointed and said, “Taken care of.”

“Good,” said Hero, heading in there.

Bea grabbed Peter by the arm. “Sit down, Pedro.”

“Peter,” he corrected automatically.

“Shut your stupid face. Old habits die hard. Sit down. We’re going to have a Challenge.”

Peter dropped onto the couch, and Bea sat down beside him. She was wearing her Determined Face, and, for some reason, she was holding his hand. He tried to pull it away, but she grabbed it back, and he let it be. Who had the energy to fight Beatrice Duke?

Ursula settled herself on the other couch, with John next to her. Freddie perched on the arm of that couch, her turtleneck once again slowly swallowing her face. Ben jumped about a bit before settling on Peter’s other side. Meg had dragged over a chair so that she could sit across from the couch Peter was on. Another empty chair was next to her.

Hero darted in and out of the kitchen, carrying endless mugs. She deliberately and carefully set a mug of tea in front of each person, except Freddie, who got water, and Ursula, who got juice. Peter stared at the tea in front of him. He was supposed to do something with this, wasn’t he?

Hero smiled at Peter and indicated his cup.

“Go on,” she said. “Part One of the Challenge is tea-drinking.”

Peter cupped his hands around the mug. He didn’t drink, but he let the heat soak into his hands. His hands were cold. He hadn’t realized.

Hero was so efficient, so thoughtful. Everyone had a cup. Everyone had what they wanted. Peter remembered the last time they had tried group tea. He seemed to recall he had ended up without a cup that time.

As everyone drank, an uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Ben was twitching. Bea was making weird hand signals at Meg. Or maybe at Hero, who had taken the empty seat on Meg’s side. Meg was largely ignoring her tea in favor of examining her split ends. Freddie was curling herself into a ball, stretching and curling again. Ursula was scribbling in a notebook. Only John and Hero sat perfectly still, drinking their tea.

This was weird. Peter wanted to be away from it.

“Where’s the hat?” he asked. He didn’t give a fuck about the stupid Challenge box. But the sooner they started, the sooner he could escape this… whatever it was.

“Weeeeellll.” Ben twitched again. “The thing is…”

Hero cut him off. “I’m setting the challenge tonight, Peter.”

Somewhere above the water, an alarm bell was ringing. Something was wrong. Very wrong. “Okay, so what it is it?”

Hero smoothed down her skirt and set her tea next to her on the floor. “Tonight’s game is called Forgiveness.”

Peter twitched. Bea’s hold on his arm tightened.

“It’s a lovely game, I think,” said Hero. “Very cleansing for the soul. Only to be done among trusted friends, obviously. Can’t play it with strangers. But I think we all know each other quite well enough to be safe. Here’s how it works. We’ll all go in a circle and say the worst thing we ever did. And then we’ll be forgiven for it, by those who know and love us best.”

The alarm was ringing, ringing, ringing. Something was going on here, something about him, but Peter couldn’t see it through the water. He couldn’t even strain his eyes. He couldn’t even think. The water had seeped into his brain.

“I’ll start!” Hero began. “When I was ten, I took $50 from my mum’s purse. I wanted to buy a friend I liked a doll she had always wanted. I knew the money wasn’t mine, and my mum had already bought a gift. I was the perfect child, so Mum blamed Leo. I never set the record straight, which of course I feel terribly about now. Perhaps I should do that when I get back to Auckland. Anyway, I went unpunished, Leo was grounded for a month, and I ended up keeping the stupid doll after my friend and I had a falling out. I felt quite guilty about it for a long time. It ate away at me. I kept thinking—I had always been told how good I was. So honest. So easy. So kind. Everyone told me I was the kind of child that they wished they had. Pure goodness and light. And I kept thinking, for years afterwards really, I couldn’t be as good as they thought. Because I’d stolen the money, and I’d let my protective, kind brother take the blame. I had trouble sleeping for a few months. And the worst part was that I didn’t even own up to it. That’s when I realized I couldn’t be nearly as good as everyone claimed.”

She looked expectantly at Meg, sitting next to her.

“I forgive you, Hero,” Meg said. Meg looked at John.

“I forgive you,” John said.

Then Ursula, in her barely-there voice: “I forgive you.”

Freddie, shying away from a camera that wasn’t there anymore: “I forgive you.”

Bea took a breath that Pedro could feel against his trapped arm. “Darling, wonderful, amazing Hero, you know I forgive you.”

All eyes in the room turned to Pedro. He opened his mouth, but he had no idea what he was going to say. He heard the words he said for the first time along with the rest of them.

“I _don’t_ forgive you.”

“Why not?” asked Hero, calm, like they were just chatting over tea.

“What are we even _doing_?” he said. “We’re going around in a circle talking about how we forgive you for some pocket change you stole seven _years_ ago, and it wasn’t even our money. This is the stupidest fucking thing. You don’t need me to forgive you.”

Hero nodded and set her mug delicately down in her lap. “Well, Peter, if you don’t want to be one of the forgivers, maybe you can take a turn on the other side.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You go next,” said Hero. She looked right at him, her stupid, sweet eyes even with his own. “Tell us, Peter. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

Peter tried to leap to his feet, but he’d forgotten Bea’s hand was still on his arm. She held him down, and he fell back on the couch in a sprawl.

“Fuck you,” he said. “ _Fuck_ you.”

The water had evaporated, and the world was rushing back in to take its place. Peter was standing alone, exposed, seeing and hearing and _feeling_ things for the first time in days, and all of the sudden, he could see the danger here, he could see that they were all looking at him, at the _real_ him, that that was what this was about, and he was scared. At long last, he was scared.

“You think you can come here, and you can air out your ridiculous dirty laundry, and we can, what? _Bond_? Over how _bad_ we’ve both been? You stole some money when you were ten and let your brother take the blame? And _that’s_ what kept you up at night? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you really think that’s some deep, dark secret? That’s something ten year old girls do. And ever since then you’ve been light, and goodness, and sweetness, and baking, and shit. That’s _nothing_. You’ll probably go home and repay the $50 with interest and take Leo out for a night at the local football field as an apology.”

Pedro wouldn’t look at the people around him—couldn’t—but he could feel their glares, their shocked silence. Bea’s nails were digging into his arm, lighting him up with pain, and he relished it. Hero, though, was right across from him. He couldn’t avoid looking at her, and she wasn’t glaring.

“Yes,” she said. “I suspect you’re right. And I’m sure Leo and Mum will forgive me. But, of course, the hardest thing to do is forgive yourself. And to find a way to live with knowing that you are capable of doing what you did. And to find a way to make that part of how you see yourself. I have to find a way to know that I’m good, and nice, and I help people, and I forgive easily and love too easily, maybe. But also to know I have a weakness—that when I want to make a friend happy, or impress them, or make them care for me, I forget my morals. Sometimes. I have to figure out how to be both those things.”

Peter yanked his arm out of Bea’s grasp and stood up. “Oh, you poor precious baby. You have a flaw. I’m sure you’ll find a way to live with it. What the fuck do you know about anything? You’re a high school twit who thinks the world is this great fucking place, full of people who do the right thing and who will love her just because she has babydoll eyes and bakes a decent cake. Well, fuck that, princess. Let’s see how you do when you’re out in the real world.”

“Hey now,” Ben said, reaching across the couch to restrain Bea, who was trying to lunge at Peter. “Let’s calm the fuck down, shall we?”

But who cared about Ben or Bea? Hero… Hero stared Peter down. She didn’t blink. She didn’t cry. She didn’t yell or run away. She just stared. A few seconds passed, and then she said slowly, “Yes, I expect you would see it that way.”

They were doing this. They really expected him to sit here and talk about the awfulness inside him, to pull it out and display it for all of them to judge, while Hero made believe that anything she’d ever done, _anything_ , could touch that. And then they could all go around and forgive him, pat and easy, like all his sins could be paid for with $50.

“FUCK THIS,” he yelled, storming to the kitchen. He rattled at the door. But the kitchen door was locked. Like the damned front door, it required a key. Which Hero had. He reached his hand into his pocket and found no keys. He looked in his jacket hung by the door. No keys there either. They had trapped him. He stomped back out into the living room, where the Forgiveness circle was waiting, staring at him.

“Let me out of here,” he roared.

They did nothing.

“This isn’t fucking funny. Let me _out_.”

 Ben stood and approached him, wary, like Peter was a lion. “Listen, man, we can’t do that. It’s time to talk. Really talk.”

“Ben, I swear to God that if you don’t let me out of here right this fucking second, I will break everything in this house. Even all of your memorabilia. _Especially_ all of your memorabilia.”

Ben gulped, but stood his ground. And now Ursula was standing up to join him.

“You’re not leaving, Pedro—sorry, Peter. You’re not leaving until everyone has had a chance to say what they came here to say.” She patted John’s shoulder. John still hadn’t looked up.

“You think you can judge me? None of you have a fucking clue. A high school twit. A girl who hides behind her camera, so she can avoid ever having to deal with her own issues. A stupid, impotent little boy. A court jester—that’s what Freddie called you, Ben! A fucking court jester, who thinks all of life is a joke and he never has to take responsibility for his own actions because it’s in service of his ‘art’ Who lives his fucking _life_ through a lens so that some random thousand people on the internet can tell him how fucking clever he is. A girl who sleeps around for validation, because her own friends don’t even like her that much. A girl who cares more about being right than having a life. You probably make Kitso keep to a schedule for sex, don’t you, Fred? And a bitch who can’t mind her own business. Who’s so desperate for her boyfriend to love her that you let him pretend you aren’t dating for the sake of some fucking Youtube hits. Fuck all of you. I don’t need any of your fucking _forgiveness._ ”

Everyone looked blank, stricken. Peter wanted them to look away, to leave. He wanted them to scream at him, tell him he was awful. He wanted Ben to take a swing at him. But they just kept fucking _staring_. He didn’t even _believe_ half of what he’d said, but he’d said it anyway to make this stop, and they _wouldn’t fucking stop_.

“You misunderstand, Peter,” said Hero. “We’re not here to give you our forgiveness. You’ve had that for ages, whether you knew it or not. We’re here to get you to forgive yourself.”

Peter shook his head. How much more of the ugliness inside him would he have to unleash before they left him alone? He had to get out. It was all crashing in. All his real friends in the world and none of them would ever speak to him again. He was sure of that now. He was so angry. He hated them. He loved them. He needed them. He didn’t need any. fucking. one.

“What about Balth, Peter?” asked Ben. “If he were here, asking you to forgive yourself, what would you say to him?”

This was easy. This was nothing, because Balth _wasn’t_ here. Peter could be as awful as he needed to be, and everyone would realize they should give up on this stupidity, and Balth never needed to be hurt.

“I would tell him that he should move on and find someone else to follow around like a puppy dog. I would tell him that one kiss, when I was just trying to get off, doesn’t mean shit. And that it was _pathetic_ , watching him run after me for scraps. I would tell him that if he’s so desperate to have things not be _casual_ , he should consider growing a fucking backbone and stop being so desperate for anything anyone will give him. I’d tell him that I never cared about him, and I definitely don’t fucking _love_ him, and if he thinks I do, then he’s a pretty piss-poor observer of love and life, no matter how many mopey fucking songs he writes. We all laughed at him on the football team when he’d show up to watch practice, trying to catch my attention. I’d tell him that.”

“None of us ever laughed at Balth,” said Ben, very quiet. “Least of all you.”

For half a second, Peter imagined going to Ben, hugging him, sitting down. Letting them judge him, or forgive him, or chastise him. Letting them do whatever they wanted. He wanted to crawl into their arms and let everything just float away, while they held him. He wanted to be touched by someone who loved him. He wanted to be judged worthy of that.

He’d never laughed at Balthazar. Not once.

But it was all out there, now, wasn’t it? All the bile in him had come to the surface. He knew what the judgment would be. And he couldn’t live with it.

He spun and kicked the wall, hard enough that one of the posters fell down. Freddie yelped in protest, and something in Peter sighed in satisfaction. _Yes, that’s right. That’s what I am, Freddie. Now you see._

He turned toward his room. No one stopped him. _Good_ , he thought, over and over again. _Good, good, good, good, good. This is good._

Peter’s room was dark. He could grab the vodka and slip out the window without too much problem. He wasn’t sure where he’d go. There was really nowhere left, was there? Maybe Costa would take him in for a while. He was so desperate to have him in the play, right? Well, he couldn’t be in the play if he was homeless, now could he? And after that… after that, who knew? After that, probably nothing.

He went to unlatch the window in preparation for his escape, but he couldn’t. Someone had stuck a padlock on it.

“What the fuck, Fred?” he muttered. She was a nutter. Like, a real one. Someone should get her help, before she fucked up in a real way, or made herself sick with anxiety. Someone who cared. Not him, obviously.

How the fuck was he going to get out of here? And where were his damn keys?

 _Of course_ , he realized. Ben or Freddie had taken them. He was probably going to have to fight Ben for them. Great, just great. Maybe he could just hide in here until they got bored. There was a lock on the door, after all. Or maybe he should break the window…

“Going somewhere?”

Peter whipped around so quickly, his neck cracked. It was Balthazar. Sitting against the wall on Peter’s bed like he’d never left.

“What…” Peter cleared his throat. He lowered his voice. “What are you doing here? How did you even get in here?

Balthazar shrugged and pointed at the window with a small smile. “My lock,” he said simply. “Not Freddie’s.”

“Give me the combination, then.” Peter had to escape. He had to get away before he contaminated Balth with his bile. Before the walls closed in. Before he actually went so far over the deep end that there was no coming back.

“Nah, I don’t think so.” Balthazar ran his hands against his own thighs, and pushed up his sleeves.

“I’m not fucking around, Balthazar. Give it to me.”

“No, Peter. I’m not your bitch.”

Peter backed away. Like, physically stumbled back until he hit the door. He closed his eyes. _Don’t cry_ , he thought. _Don’t you fucking cry_.

“You, uh. You heard that, did you?” he asked, eyes still screwed shut.

“Yeah, I heard that,” Balth said. He was quiet, but his voice was getting louder. Was he coming closer? “You made a real speech. I think you maybe insulted everyone you’ve ever met.”

What could Peter say to that? It was true.

 “I heard you call me a puppy, begging for scraps.”

Peter still had his eyes closed, but he could _feel_ Balth next to him, the heat of him. Peter slumped against the door.

“Balth…” The name was agony on the way out. “Balth… I…”

He couldn’t finish. He didn’t know what to say. There were no words to make it better. There was no taking it back.

This was why he had to get away. He couldn’t stay here and let them forgive him. Because they would, wouldn’t they? He could rage and scream and hurt them, and they’d still forgive him. He had hurt a kind and generous soul, and for no reason, except that he was so angry, and that his toxicity inevitably spilled over onto those he was closest to. He destroyed everything he touched. He couldn’t let it go on.

“Peter,” said Balth. “Pedro…” He put a tentative hand on Peter’s face, brushing away the hair sticking to Peter’s sweaty forehead. Peter tried so hard not to savor every moment. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not really. And yeah, you’re going to have to apologize. To rebuild trust. But I know they aren’t true. I know now. I know what you’re doing. And I know… I know you love me.”

Finally, finally, Peter opened his eyes. Balth was looking at him so openly, so vulnerably. Peter could see how much it had cost him to say that. And even though he knew he should, he couldn’t bring himself to shut Balth down.

“And I love you,” Balth said. “But you know that.”

“You shouldn’t,” Peter said.

“Well, you don’t get to make that call.”

They stared at each other, like the game of Chicken, only a thousand times more intense. And once again, Peter backed down first. He looked away. “Yeah, all right.”

Balth let out a breath, and it blew across Peter’s face. “We’re going to go back out there.”

Peter made a noise of protest.

“We _are_ ,” said Balth. “And you’re going to listen what we say, and then you’re going to make a decision. Either you’re going to get some help, or you’re going to move out and none of us can speak to you again until you do.”

“No, Balth, no,” Peter said. He’d just been thinking that these friendships were over. That he needed to leave, to disappear into nothingness. But having Balth _actually say_ they’d never speak again—well, it turned out he couldn’t take that. “You can’t… I know I’ve fucked up, I know I need to be punished, but _please_ , you can’t just cut me out. Please.”

“It’s not a punishment, Pete!” It was the first time Balth had raised his voice since Peter had come into the room. Peter flinched. “It’s incentive, yeah? The only thing we can take away, to make you want to get better. And it’s protection. Because if you can’t heal with us, then we have to heal without you. So what’s it gonna be?”

Balth stood back, and Peter realized that he was done talking. It was all on Peter, now. And then, Peter’s brain stopped working.

He stood for he didn’t know how long, staring at the ground between him and Balth. Every once in a while, a thought would creep into his head— _what do I do?_ —and then his brain would shut it down, and he would go back to blank, blank, blank.

And then, after some time—who knew how much time, time was something your brain did—Balth said, “Peter?”

And Peter broke. He sagged against Balthazar and Balthazar held him up. Peter was crying, huge, embarrassing, uncontrollable sobs, and he couldn’t believe that twenty minutes ago, he hadn’t been able to feel anything at all.

When the tears stopped, finally, they made their way out of the dark into the light of the living room Balth leading Peter, who was shuffling, by the hand. Everyone stood up. They all looked stressed. Peter knew he must look worse, and he wiped at his face, trying fruitlessly to hide the fact that he’d been crying. They’d probably all heard him, anyway.

“Where do you want me?” he said hoarsely. Hero smiled and indicated to the couch he’d just left. Balthazar walked him over there and then sat next to him. He held his hand, and Peter didn’t bother to try to shake it off. He didn’t want to.

“Okay,” said Hero. “Now we can really begin. Bea, you know what to do.”

Bea pulled a chair over to face Peter. She had a piece of well-read notebook paper in her hand. She sat down, set the paper face-up on her lap, glanced at it once, and began.

“Peter,” she said. She reached out a hand and squeezed his shoulder. “We’ve known each other since we were children. You were always so fun. So full of life. Charming. Suave and smooth. A good friend. For years, I never saw you do a thing wrong. But I never should have called you All Around Great Guy.”

Peter groaned, but Bea flashed a small smile at him. She checked her paper again, and went on.

“It wasn’t fair to put that on you. You were a good guy. A good friend. A good student. But you weren’t perfect, and you thought you should be. And we all played into that. An argument? Go find Pedro, he’ll mediate it. Need someone to lead the football team? Pedro’s the guy. Class leader? He can do that too! You are so many things, Peter. You’re so many good things, but you’re not perfect. None of us are.” She looked up from her paper and grinned, for real this time. “I mean, you made that pretty obvious.”

Bea looked back down. She was reading from notes, Peter realized. They’d really planned this.

“So when everything happened, last year—when you did what you did—what a harsh realization. For us. But mostly for you. Because you were supposed to be the All Around Great Guy, so if you weren’t that, then what were you? So, you came to school and you tried to be someone else, didn’t you? Pedro was straight, monogamous, followed the rules, everyone’s friend, an athlete, a good student. And Peter was bisexual, a drinker, promiscuous, stayed up all hours, pushed his friends away. You really did the job. But Peter… Pedro… Whatever you call yourself, you’re all of those things. You’re not perfect, okay, but you’re not evil. You’re a good student, who sometimes gets lazy and doesn’t go to class. You’re a serious guy, who likes to have fun sometimes with a few drinks. You’re everyone’s friend, but you’re family to those friends who are lucky enough to know you best. You like sex, and you like monogamy. All of those things are okay, Pedro. You’re 19. You’re not supposed to know who you are entirely. But your core doesn’t change. You may have stopped seeing the funny, caring friend, but we didn’t. We see him, and we also see that you can be petty and jealous. You can hurt people as much as you love them, and we see that. But we love both of those people. Because both of those people are you. We love you.”

Peter hid his head in his hands. He couldn’t look at her. He could stare anyone down in the face of the most awful insults. But he couldn’t look Bea in the eyes while she said she loved him.

Now Hero sat in front of him. She had no notes. She gently tilted his head upward.

“Peter,” she said. “I forgive you. I forgave you a year ago. There’s no need to continue to apologize to me. What’s done is done. And what happened should no more define your life than it should define mine. All I ask now is that you forgive yourself.”

The moment Hero took her hand away, Peter let his head fall again.

Next came Meg. “You’re kind of a bastard, you know that right?”

Peter laughed, and looked up. Meg was smiling at him.

“But I feel like you already knew that. I already knew that, because I’m kind of a bastard too. Sometimes I do things just to see what other people will do in response. Sometimes I ignore what’s happening around me because it’s boring, or because it’s not enough about me. But I’m a damned good friend. I’m a great writer. I make life _spicy_.” She waggled her eyebrows, and Peter laughed again.

“My faults don’t define me,” Meg said. “They’re just one part of the whole picture that makes me the Queen of Everything. I forgive myself all the time. Like, there, right now! I was thinking about how Bea’s hair looks kind of weird from this angle. And now I’ve forgiven myself. You should really try it.”

She stood up and slapped Peter affectionately on the head. And Peter, against all odds, felt better.

Ursula nudged John, who took his place in the chair. He spoke to the floor.

“I feel guilty. I mean, if you get down to it, this is my fault, isn’t it?”

Peter grabbed John’s hand. He’d failed his brother enough. He wouldn’t let John get dragged down with him. “No. John, no, none of this is you, okay? I don’t want you to feel guilty.”

John flicked his eyes up, just for a second. “You can say that to me, but not to yourself?”

Peter reared back, speechless.

“I feel guilty that I was so angry at you,” John said. “I caused what happened to Hero, and I caused you to act out like this. It wasn’t even an accident. It was what I wanted. But I don’t want it anymore, and I’m tired of feeling guilty. It’s hard and it’s tiring and I don’t see any need for it to continue. If you want to make up for being a shitty brother when we were younger, then you can pull yourself together and stop feeling guilty so that I can stop feeling guilty. Maybe then we can have the relationship we should’ve had to start.”

John made to stand up, but Peter kept hold of his hand and pulled him back down, squeezing tight. He still couldn’t speak, so he just kept John there for a moment, drawing on every reserve of strength he had to keep looking in his eyes. He was crying again. Fuck.

Ursula’s turn was short. They weren’t close, and Peter imagined she was mostly here to support Balthazar. Still, she said that she had fond memories of Peter helping her with maths in Grade 11, even though she was really Bea’s friend. And that he had done it quietly, in the library after school for three months, just because.

Peter had been proud of that, once upon a time. Now it just felt like… not him. Like some younger, stupider person. But he didn’t tell Ursula that.

Freddie took her turn, next. She read in a monotone straight from her notes, without looking up.

“You haven’t been the easiest flatmate, Peter. And it’s not just that you brought people home, or that you drank too much. Or how your ‘special guests’ would finish the milk, and Balth would have to go get more to save you from my wrath. Early in the morning. A few times a week. Balth doesn’t even drink milk!” Freddie looked up, so incensed that she briefly forgot her notes. Then she recovered. “You made the flat sad and angry. I’ve been watching Ben and Stanley worry about you and take care of you from the day you got here, and I wondered why they cared about you so much.”

It was like he’d been punched. Peter hunched over, and felt Balth’s arm snake around his shoulders. Balth’s hand was running up and down his arm.

“But then I think about how you always check to make sure I’m not walking home alone late at night, or how funny you can be, and what I think is, I’ve never really known you at all. You’ve made sure of that.” Freddie took a breath and looked up from her notes. Pedro was still looking at his lap, and he couldn’t see her face, but when she spoke again, it was much more natural. “I’d really like to know you, Peter Donaldson.”

Freddie stood up. One more to go. One more person, and then they could be done with this. Peter had lived through Bea and Hero and John. He could live through Ben.

Like Bea and Freddie, Ben had notes. Unlike Bea and Freddie, he took one look at them and set them aside.

“You know I think apologies are boring, but I think I’m starting to get why we do them so much,” he said. “I think I owe you one. A few, even.”

Peter shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Petey, I’ve been letting you slip through my fingers for a year, now. We made that video at the apology party, and you basically told me you weren’t okay, and I decided that the way to fix that was to hook you up with someone? What even is that?”

“You were trying to help,” Peter said.

Ben ignored him. “And then you came here, and I started recording our whole lives, and I saw it made you uncomfortable, and I still put it on the internet.”

“You put everyone on the internet.”

“And _then_ , when you were getting out of control and any _idiot_ could see you were unhappy, Freddie and I made these rules. And you stopped drinking and bringing people home, and I forgot that it was never that part that I was worried about. It was the unhappy part. I’ve taken the easy way out, with you, and now here we are. So I apologize. Can you forgive me?”

Peter shook his head.

“You can’t forgive me?”

“I keep telling you guys, this isn’t on you, okay? I’m the one who fucked up.”

Ben reached forward and slapped Peter’s head, a lot less gently than Meg had. “Pete, any idiot can see that I’ve fucked up quite a bit, here, and while we’ve just established that you are many things, none of them is an idiot. So just forgive me, or don’t.”

Peter swallowed. “I forgive you. Of course I forgive you.”

“Good.” Ben sat back. “Now the boring part’s done.”

And then the genial-vlogger-Ben voice was gone, and all that was left was serious Ben. The Ben who’d kicked Peter and Claudio out of his house, that day a year ago.

“I’ve been so fucking worried about you, Pete. Those first few months, I don’t think you saw how bad it got. Freddie and I used to talk about you at night, after you passed out. I was worried I’d wake up one morning, and you’d be in the emergency department. And after a while, I checked out, and it was Balth, you know? Balth who got you water and picked up the milk and cleaned up after you. And that just sucked, because Balth didn’t deserve that, and it was killing him. You know that, don’t you?”

Peter didn’t answer. His head was fully buried in his lap. Balth was rubbing his shoulders.

“But mostly, I just _missed_ you. You’re one of my best friends, and all of a sudden, you were just _gone_. Every once in a while, I’d see you laugh, and it’d be like, ‘There’s Pedro!’ But mostly, you were just angry, and depressed, and drunk, and I’d lost you. I thought I’d be living in Wellington with my friends, but now Balth is gone, and you were never here at all. I don’t want to miss you anymore, okay? I want you to be here. And that… that’s all.”

Ben stopped speaking. The room was silent. With his eyes closed and his head on his lap, if Peter tried very hard, he could pretend that he was all alone. Except for Balth’s hands, still on his shoulders.

“Peter?” said Hero, somewhere very far away.

Peter put his hands on his head, holding himself down.

“Peter, are you okay?” Hero stepped over to him—he could hear her walking—and gently put her hands on his.

“I’m sorry.”

“What was that, Peter?” asked Hero.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He couldn’t stop. He was shaking, ready to fly apart, and only the _sorrys_ and his own hands were holding him together.

“Peter! Peter, it’s okay!”

Someone was pulling him up, prying his hands from his head and holding him a few feet off the couch, half hugging him, half supporting him. He realized with shock that it was Hero. Tiny Hero, keeping him upright.

“You’re forgiven,” she said in to his neck, which was slumped across her shoulder. “That’s what this is. You’re forgiven.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I know you think that, Peter, but that’s the problem. Don’t you see that’s the whole problem? This could all be done in a second, if you’d just believe that you don’t have to be perfect to deserve forgiveness.”

She set him back on the couch. Everyone was staring, even Ursula. He hung his head, but he didn’t double over again.

“Can you tell me what’s going on in your head?” Hero asked.

Peter ground his hands into his eyes. He seemed to have passed some turning point. All of the turmoil was still there, but collapsing into Hero’s arms had let some of the air out of it. He felt almost calm.

“I guess,” he said. “I guess I can do that.”

Balth took his hand again. And somehow, Peter found himself telling the whole story.

“When I first got here, it was like a new start. I could be anyone. Anything. I didn’t have to be All Around Great Guy Pedro. I didn’t have to play sports. I didn’t have to be a leader. I didn’t _have_ to be anything. And that was just… such a relief. I felt okay. No, I felt _good_. I could be openly out. I could date who I wanted. Do what I wanted. The first month or two—I _liked_ my life. I almost liked myself. And then…”

Peter chanced a look at Balth, who was calm and steady and looking at him.

“Only Balth and I know about this, I think, and I guess you don’t know the most important parts, Balth. God. We were messing around in the bathtub in February, you know, those ‘Balth in a Bath’ things. And I looked at him. And I knew. I was so fucking in love with him. I just wanted to be with him. And I realized, fuck, this isn’t home. I don’t have to be straight-laced Pedro, I don’t have any kind of image to live up to. I can really do this here. And we kissed and it was great and then we each went to our own separate bedrooms and I tossed and turned all night. It was like I couldn’t get my mind to turn off. Last time I thought I was in love with someone, I got so angry and hurt by her blowing me off that I set her up with Ben, to embarrass her. And then I did… what I did, to Hero. And partly that happened because I was still upset at Beatrice, but partly it happened because, as it turned out, while I’d thought I was being a good older brother, I was just fucking shit.”

John made a move to interrupt, but Ursula put a quieting hand on his shoulder.

“I just… I felt toxic. If I could do that to Beatrice, and Ben, and Hero, and all when I’d thought I was being _good_ , what was going to keep me from hurting Balthazar? I destroy everything I touch. And I just got so fucking scared. So I brought a guy home and fucked him the next night.”

Balth’s hand felt very heavy on his. “I mean, I guess it wasn’t rational like that. I wasn’t like, thinking in a straight line. It’s not like I thought, ‘I love Balth. I destroy people I love. Therefore, I should make Balth stop loving me and pretend I don’t love him. Therefore, I should show him I don’t love him.’ I just knew I was so scared of hurting him, and then the next night, I found myself in a bar, and… Well, that was the general reasoning, I’m pretty sure.

“And I sort of expected to be punished. I thought Balth would for sure tell Ben what I’d done, and then maybe I’d get kicked out of the flat, or chastised or something, but he just kept his mouth shut. I’m sure he was protecting me despite how shitty I’d been. And Balth… God, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I should’ve… God… _Fuck_.”

Balth squeezed his hand so hard it hurt. Peter wished he would squeeze harder.

“Anyway,” Peter said, after a breath, “It was just so fucked up, you know? And I knew it, like, I’m pretty sure I knew it. But I couldn’t forget what I’d done at Messina, or what I’d done here, and it was like the whole thing just came down. But I didn’t want to, God, I _still_ don’t want to think about that. So I tried to convince myself that I was just trying to have fun. Stretching my wings. Every time I brought someone home, it was this fucked up thing where I think I was proving to myself that I didn’t want Balth, and also trying to push him away. When I went out drinking, it wasn’t about fun, it was about forgetting. And everything I did just made everyone feel worse, which made _me_ feel worse, and I was just so… toxic. Everything I touched, I made more toxic. Everything I said and did made everyone else miserable. And I didn’t want that, but I didn’t know how to stop.

“When the rules started, I was so fucking angry. I was, you know, I’d convinced myself so hard that I was having fun. So I joined the play. It seemed like a loophole. I could get around the kissing rule, and the curfew rule. But then it was actually kind of fun, and at some point I realized, the rules were a way out. I couldn’t be with Balth, so I couldn’t hurt him, and I couldn’t drink and shit, so I couldn’t make you guys miserable that way. But I didn’t have to admit what a horrible person I was. And the challenges were fun, and it was all kind of okay.

“And then I… fuck. I’m such an arsehole. I added Chicken to the Challenge box to punish Ben. I was pissed about the rules, and I thought, well, serves him right if he has to kiss Freddie and piss off Bea. But I guess I got what was coming to me, because then I was staring right at Balth and just wanting to kiss him and make it real. But then my phone rang, and I just remembered who I was and why that couldn’t happen.

“But after that it just got a lot harder to ignore. All of it. And then Bea and Meg came, and—this isn’t your fault—but it was like I was being haunted. I’m sitting there, and there’s Bea and Ben together, snuggling up on me so they wouldn’t break the rules, and all I can think about is what an arsehole I was to you guys. Remembering what I did to Hero. It was like the Ghosts of Messina. And it was right around then that Balth and the rest of you started to get really fed up with me, finally, and I knew that was a good thing, but I just really didn’t want it.”

Peter stopped. There was something blocking his throat, and when he sobbed, he realized what it was. “I really don’t want to lose you guys.”

Balth squeezed his hand again. “Peter…”

Peter shook his head, clearing out the tears. “No. It’s okay, just. Just let me finish. So you guys were finally starting to wise up. And I was just. I wanted you so much, Balth, you have no idea, and I started to think, you know, I’m doing better, maybe I could… maybe Balth and I could… But I fucked that up too.

“So I thought—I don’t know. I thought, maybe if I just show I can really commit now. Really do it. Then everything would be fixed. That if I could follow the rules, if I could show I’d stay with them, then I wasn’t just doing it to not be punished. I was doing it because I was a good person who could follow the rules. But by then Balth was done with them and us and especially me, and Freddie and Ben were miserable, and God, we’re just all so fucking miserable. And I just don’t know… how did it get like this? Because I talk it back, and I can tell, sort of, what I was doing at each point, and why, but I just don’t know how I fucked it all up this bad. I’m just. I’m fucking _terrible_ , okay, I’m a bad person, and I don’t understand why you guys would go to all this trouble for me. I really don’t understand.”

Now they knew it all. Now they could see, couldn’t they? He looked up. He looked them in the eyes—Hero, Bea, Freddie, fucking _Ursula_ —daring them to say he deserved forgiveness.

And it was Ben, against all odds, who spoke first.

“God, Pedro,” he said, forgetting himself. “Why didn’t you _talk_ to me?”

“And say what? I’m a bad person, stay away from me?”

“No. Well, yes. You could’ve told me that you felt like that. I could’ve helped you.”

 “I didn’t want help, Ben. I just thought, you know, I’m a bad person, this is what I get. If I talked about it, everything bad would just spill out on everyone else. Everything I touched was destroyed. I just want to take it all back. How much I hurt each of you. I want to be a good person. I just…” He was crying again. Was he ever going to be done crying? “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

He was bent over again, trying to stop crying, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hero give Ben a nod.

“Look,” said Ben. “We don’t want you to feel like this either, okay? That’s why we’re here. So we talked to some people at uni. There’s health support services. You have us. None of us are going anywhere, as long as you agree to go talk to some professionals to really figure this mess all out. Here.”

Ben handed Peter a shiny brochure. It had a smiling girl in a backpack on the cover. Inside, it had bullet-pointed lists of information about the uni’s mental health services.

Freddie popped over and handed him another piece of paper, this one printed with what looked like Peter’s current schedule.

“The rules are gone,” she said. “If you want to go out late at night, not come home, get drunk and pass out on the couch, there’s no rule stopping you. The only rule is that if you don’t get help, you can’t stay here. And we’re hoping the help will make the other rules unnecessary. Except chores and bills. Those rules never go away.”

She stopped, and visibly reigned herself in, for which Peter was glad, because at this point, he was near to petitioning Webster’s to take the word “rules” out of the dictionary.

“Anyway,” said Freddie, “this is your schedule, and this is when I discovered the mental health services can see you. You can see there’s plenty of room for the play, and for schoolwork, and for a job it you want one. They said how often counselors meet you depends on the case, so I figure you’ll probably be going a lot at first, but…”

Bea cleared her throat, and Freddie backed away, a little sheepishly.

“So, Pedro,” said Bea. “Peter. Whatever your name is. Are you in?”

Peter looked around. He had no idea how, but somehow, he’d acquired eight people who were willing to put their lives on hold, who were willing to be screamed at and cried on, who were willing to lock doors and steal keys, who were willing to literally hold him up off the ground, just to help him.

He had to trust them. It was the only thing he had left.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m in.”

It was like everyone in the room’s Valium kicked in at once. Eight identical slumps. Eight identical sighs of relief.

“Good,” said Hero.

Slowly, the room emptied. Meg gave him a ruffle of hair as she headed back to Vegan Fred’s. Ursula took Balth aside for a moment, hugged him hard, then kissed Peter on the head before following Meg out the door. John announced his intention to spend the night on the couch. Hero said she’d take the other couch. Freddie went into her room to call Kitso. Ben and Bea retreated to his room. And Balthazar put his arm around Peter and helped him into his bed. Then Balth retreated too, and Peter was alone.

Peter couldn’t blame him for leaving. Everyone was going to need some alone time, after the emotional napalm he’d blasted over the evening. But as overwhelming as the intervention had been, as much of a relief as it was to retreat to the quiet, being alone terrified him. He could feel the anxiety and self-loathing nibbling at the edges of his mind, and it felt unsettlingly like the night after he’d first kissed Balth. One step forward, a million steps back. Probably, they’d teach him how not to do that, in therapy, but he hadn’t had therapy, yet. All he really had was his deep desire to not lose the people who had done so much for him. And he hoped, he really hoped, it would be enough to keep him from reaching for the vodka under his bed.

Then suddenly the door opened again, and there was Balthazar with aspirin and water and tea, and a cool wet cloth. He cleaned off Peter’s disgusting, sweaty, tear-stained face without flinching or complaining. He ordered Peter into real pajamas, made sure he drank the tea while it was still warm, told him to drink the water to replace what he’d lost in crying. He pulled back Peter’s comforter and patted the bed for Peter to climb in. Then he sat next to him, while Peter laid there, clutching a pillow to his chest.

“I’m sorry, Balth,” Peter whispered. “I swear this is the last time you’ll ever have to take care of me.”

Balthazar smiled a little. “I hope not.”

Peter wasn’t really hydrated enough to burst into tears again, but one or two trickled out. He couldn’t help it. It was more than he could ever have hoped for.

Balthazar lay down against him and pulled Peter into his embrace. He spooned him gently, rocking and humming, and smoothed his hair, and rubbed his arms, and just _held_ him. Touched him. And it was so good. There was no poison spilling out on Balthazar. No bitterness. No pain. Maybe that would come tomorrow, but in this moment, it was just good. And as Peter began to drift off to sleep, he heard Balth singing.

_Serve God, love me, and mend._

_This is not the end._

_Live unbruised, we are friends._

_And I'm sorry,_

_I'm sorry._

_Sigh no more, no more._

_One foot in sea, one on shore._

_My heart was never pure._

_You know me,_

_You know me._

_But man is a giddy thing,_

_Oh man is a giddy thing,_

_Oh man is a giddy thing,_

_Oh man is a giddy thing._

_Love, it will not betray you,_

_Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free._

_Be more like the man you were made to be._

_There is a design, an alignment to cry_

_Of my heart to see,_

_The beauty of love as it was made to be._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ursula's poem is from _Julius Caesar_ , though she doesn't know that. Balthazar's song is "Sigh No More" by Mumford & Sons, but you probably _do_ know that.


End file.
